Friday 18 April 2014

Bottlenose Dolphin / Tursiops truncatus

Bottle Nose Dolphin
Photo: A bottlenose dolphin prepares to submerge

Their intelligence, friendly disposition, and "smiling" faces make dolphins popular in large aquariums and with divers. In the wild, these sleek swimmers can reach speeds of over 18 miles an hour. 
They surface often to breathe, doing so two or three times a minute. Bottle-nose dolphins travel in social groups and communicate with each other by a complex system of squeaks and whistles. 
Schools of dolphins have been known to come to the aid of an injured dolphin and help it to the surface.

Bottle-nose dolphins track their prey through the expert use of echolocation. 
They can make up to 1,000 clicking noises per second. These sounds travel underwater until they encounter objects, then bounce back to their dolphin senders, revealing the location, size, and shape of their target!

Bottle-nose dolphins are found in tropical oceans and other warm waters around the globe. They were once widely hunted for meat and oil (used for lamps and cooking), but today only limited dolphin fishing occurs. 

However, dolphins are threatened by commercial fishing for other species, like tuna, and can become mortally entangled in nets and other fishing equipment. Dolphins eat squid, shrimp and any other bottom of the sea foods.

Dolphins live for 45-50 years, in a group they are called a pod, they are also carnivores so eat only meat.

Size relative to a 6ft man:
Illustration: Bottlenose dolphin compared with adult man

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